ASHEVILLE — A street fight outside of a downtown teen party preceded the killing of 12-year-old Derrick Lee Jr., according new details from police.

Within days of the July 1 drive-by shooting, investigators had two persons of interest and had filed two search warrants in an attempt to obtain phone and social media records of a teen who allegedly claimed responsibility on Facebook.

Asheville Police Department detective Christopher Dennis executed his warrants in early August. Neither was made public until Monday, when both were returned to the Buncombe County Magistrate's Office.

The Citizen Times is withholding the names of the teen and a second person identified in the warrants because they have not been charged with a crime connected to the shooting that left Lee dead and another juvenile victim shot through the foot.

The teen at the heart of Dennis' investigation became the subject of the detective's search warrants after a woman contacted police with a tip. Her child, she said, had seen a post on the teen's Facebook page in which he wrote "he was the shooter and they can't touch him," according to the probable cause affidavit of Dennis' warrants.

911 recordings reveal information

After listening to recordings of the 911 calls that informed police of the shooting, detectives determined that somebody in the background could be heard identifying the shooters, the search warrants state.

Hours before the drive-by, one of the two identified had been involved in a fight outside of a teen party in downtown Asheville. The fight occurred on Broadway about 12:30 am. — two and a half hours before Lee was killed in front of a house in Lee Walker Heights.

Dennis wrote in his warrant applications that Lee and and another juvenile victim of the drive-by had attended the teen party where the fight broke out hours earlier.

Witnesses, according to Dennis, named the juvenile victim who survived the shooting as a member of a crowd that "jumped" a juvenile with the teen subject of Dennis' warrants.

"After the fight dispersed, the majority of the subjects from the party went to Lee Walker Heights," Dennis wrote. "Witnesses stated around 0300 hours, two subjects started shooting into the crowd."

Police hadn't corroborated any of those accounts until Dennis' warrants became public Monday.

The search warrants made no mention of Lee being involved in a fight at the teen party.

CLOSE

Charlotte Tolbert, and Rev. Eddie Tolbert, the grandparents of Derrick LaQuinn Lee Jr., reflect on his life after he was killed in a drive-by shooting
Asheville Citizen Times

His grandfather, the Rev. Eddie Tolbert, told the Citizen Times months after the shooting that Lee was not a violent child and avoided confrontation, though he would stand up to bullies.

Tolbert — who along with his wife, Charlotte, was Lee's legal guardian — couldn't immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. In the months since Lee's death, Tolbert has spoken out against gun violence at public meetings and implored the community to come forward with any information that could lead to an arrest.

Despite Dennis' warrants, nobody has been charged with a crime related to the shooting that claimed Lee's life.

There is a $5,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest in the case.